As a spy, 41-year-old Sub-Lt. Jeffrey Delisle was a pathetic successor to real-life predecessor Russian spies like Rudolf Abel, Gordon Lonsdale (Konon Molody), or traitors like Kim Philby and the mundane Guy Burgess and Donald Maclean.

There’s a big difference between the Cold War spies for the Soviet system and today’s “by chance” spies for a Russia that’s no longer bent on world domination via subversion and intimidation.

Delisle’s treason, and thumb drives filled with U.S., NATO and Canadian naval intelligence for the Russians, are more an embarrassment than a crucial breach of Western security.

Still, one hopes this weak excuse for a naval officer gets a maximum sentence.

A bigger question than his treason is how this guy ever got a commission?

How did he ever qualify to work at Halifax’s HMCS Trinity, the RCN’s intelligence centre where, one assumes, the best and the brightest of naval personal work?

Forget the accusation (made by some) that Delisle was among the “blandest of the bland” in the navy.

Usually spies work hard at appearing bland and unnoticeable. A quality of the craft.

For Delisle it came naturally. He didn’t have to work at it.

In trying to determine the causes for his treason, interrogators could find no ideological motivation to work for the Russians.

He was not a zealous lefty convinced he was a warrior for peace.

He had no reason to resent his country — after all, he was a naval officer.

His marriage was in a bad way, but so are a lot of marriages.

A lousy marriage is a sorry reason to change sides and work for a country that intends harm to your country.

And the Russians didn’t even have to recruit him — he walked into their embassy in Ottawa and volunteered.

It must have been something of a shock to the Russkies who aren’t used to Canadian naval officers (or any other naval officers) offering to supply them with military information.

When they realized Delisle was for real, and not a plant to trap them into revealing themselves as spies, they used him — as, indeed, our side would probably use a Russian naval officer as a source of information if one volunteered.

It’s said that in some five years of gathering data for the Russians, Delisle was paid something like $72,000, which he was told not to deposit in a bank, but to keep separate so there’d be no record of strange deposits.

That the Russians considered Delisle something of an intelligence gold mine is evident in that they flew him to Rio de Janeiro in 2011 for a meeting with a Russian military intelligence officer who wanted him to go to Austria for training to be a courier or liaison with other agents.

If nothing else, this seems to indicate that Russian espionage or intelligence is as shaky as ours, if they didn’t spot Delisle as too erratic to trust.

To use, yes, but not to trust, which is essential for a clandestine espionage-liaison officer.

We are told Delisle had considered suicide, but refrained out of concern his four kids would grow up without a father.

What rubbish.

He’s already disgraced his kids and family far more than his untimely death would have.

There’s no James Bond story in Jeffrey Delisle’s life. Perhaps his only achievement is giving espionage a bad name.

About the author

Other Stories

The tale of Toronto Sun founding editor Peter Worthington’s role in the escape of his interpreter from the Soviet Union in the 1960s is the stuff of legend. However, Worthington wanted to wait until all the protagonists — including himself — were dead before he told the story in complete detail. So here, for the first time in publication, is Part 2